‫ קלעזנײַעס‬KlezNews
2005 ‫סטן אוגוסט‬23 ‫דעם‬
23rd August, 2005
‫זײַט באגריסט‬
‫קלעזמרים און קלעזפרײַנד‬
Life in Bonim “101 ‫מיט דעם קורס ”ײִדיש‬
by Renah and Keith Wolzinger
It’s August 22, 2005, and the families
of Bonim return once again, arriving by plane and by car, loaded with
luggage, instruments, and of course
snacks for the kids. Klez Kanada has
become an annual reunion of families
that come from across the U.S. For the
past 6 years, the children have grown
from toddlers to tweens and teens, and
many have even become scholarship
recipients. Technology being a big part
of our kids lives, they keep in touch by
email and instant messaging.
The parents of Bonim have become a
close-knit group as well. Upon arrival at
camp, we burst into the office with fingers crossed hoping to be reassigned to
Bonim, our annual home together. We
swap stories of our lives during the year,
and are always amazed on how the kids
have grown. We love to find out what
everyone is doing with their music,
and how playing Klezmer has changed
our lives. Some families see each other
during the year, but since we come from
both the West Coast and the East Coast,
and have many activities
all year with our kids, meeting seems
difficult to arrange.
So now we’re all back, and it’s almost
as if we never left. We’ve never skipped
a beat (so to speak). The kids are not
Continued, page 4, column 3
It is important that KlezKanada convey not only how to play klezmer and
Yiddish music, but that it also imbue
participants with some sense of Yiddish
culture. This year’s experiment was to
set up an afternoon-long set of three
sessions, “Klezmer 101”, beginning with
an hour-long Yiddish language session. Those with at least some Yiddish
listened to Peysakh Fishman talk in
simple Yiddish about the language and
about Ashkenazic culture. I have tried
to capture a few fragments of the talk.
Shvell—Threshhold
“If you don’t understand everything,
stop me immediately and I will explain.”
Peysakh lines his article out, at first
slowly in Yiddish, then English, back
and forth to clarify and to convey ideas.
Pamelekh – langsam – slowly.
Tzu redden. Wen a civilizatzia of ein
fus is sehr shver—Ashkenaz civilization
is more than 1000 years old.
Idishe geshichte – Jewish history
Tzu voynen in a golus – to live in
diaspora – is sehr shver – is very bad.
First he talks about Aramaic, the
Jewish language of the Talmud.
Bregn – borders
Ki – cattle
The ghettos (judengas) forced Jews
to live together. We don’t have a land.
What holds us together? The Torah.
Bushe – embarrassment – shande, a
kharpe – not to know Torah.
Yeshivas in Germany competed, were
equivalent to those that had been in
Babylonia.
Great Rabbis included Gershom,
who forbade polygamy, and Rashi.
And the best yeshivas were from Poland
to Frankreich, the Rhine Valley.
Shteyger vun lebn – lifestyle (style
of living)
A tzimes makhn vun meren (fruit?
Is a pun on “mehr” – more)
Challah, Borsht
Talks about pulling German and
Slavic words into Yiddish. Then talks
about new languages being pulled into
Yiddish today, and Yiddish into English.
Molerei – painting
The Yiddish table is our new altar,
replacing that of the destroyed temple.
Each holiday we eat special foods to
give us the sense of the holiday. The
tish, the table is for the kinder.
Someone comes up to say that she
can even type Yiddish (with latin
letters) in e-mail, and there are small
classes all over.
Peysakh says that Yiddish isn’t dead,
but there isn’t Yiddish art and film
and a market—a place where people
conduct commerce in Yiddish.
Var vos nicht – why not?
To live a full Yiddish life, you need
to speak and eat and live in Yiddish,
not just speak it here and there.
“Gitl Purishkevitsh”—Stories of Draft Resistance from many times and places
A new piece of musical theatre based
on a monologue by Sholem Aleichem,
and created by Jenny Levison and
Josh Waletzky is coming to life. Since
the piece is about a mother getting her
son out of the tzar’s army, Jenny and
Josh have been gathering oral histories
of other draft resistors. Here is a first
installment of those stories.
Damian Nisenson
I come from Buenos Aires Argentina.
In the beginning of 1977, some months
after the army coup in Argentina, I
had to go into the army. Mine was
the first group that had to go into the
army when we were eighteen years
old. Before that people went into the
army at twenty one. So we were really
really very young. And it was a very
hard situation – very young soldiers
having to go kill innocent people,
making them disappear. We had to
get involved in very nasty things that
we didn’t want to get involved in. And
me personally, I had another situation
at that time. By the time I had to go
to the army, my former girlfriend just
had disappeared, my best friend had
disappeared. So I really didn’t know
what to do. But this wasn’t something
I could just avoid. I really had to go. I
didn’t feel brave enough to do any kind
of thing, to flee the country, or anything. So I went to the army.
The mother of a friend, who was a
psychiatrist, told me once, “I can help
you. Just they can believe you’re crazy.”
But I wasn’t brave enough to do that
either. So first day, we had to be there
I think it was something like six in the
morning. It was summer. Summer in
Buenos Aires can be very very hot. We
spent about the whole day under the
sun. We sitting on asphalt. Very very
ugly. The sergeants and corporals they
were just walking around us, kicking
us. We were treated very very badly. In
the evening they gave us army clothing. If you were tall they gave you
short, small clothing. If you were small
time. Right then I made the decision
that there was no way I could stay a
whole year in the army. I never liked
the army, but I thought I had to do it, I
was called to do it. There was no legal
way I could avoid, but then I said. “No.
This is not for me. It’s not just that I
don’t agree. It’s much more than that.”
Then in the morning we had a
medical exam – all the 300 of us were
completely naked outside. There was
an nurse officer who was walking
one by one and asking, “Do you have
anything to declare?” And I saw that
of these 300 kids, only ten or twelve
made one step forward. One gave one
reason – asthma, and another had,
well, all different things. And when
it was my turn I just --- I was already
comedian at the time. I started working when I was fourteen, fifteen years
old in Argentina, and I said to myself,
“Well, I have to do something.”
I walked one step forward, and I
said, “I have some nervous problems.”
And this guy looked at me, and I think
he believed it could be true, so at that
moment I became part of the probably
sick people group. That means that
we have to undergo a series of tests.
It depended on what kind of disease
you said you had. And doctors would
decide if you were really sick or not. If
they decided you were not, you were
going to have a very very bad and very
very long time in the army. If they
they made us do squats for an hour,
while the officers were walking behind thought you were sick, you were out.
For a whole month, thirty days, 24
us and kicking us in the balls.
That was the first night. Then, about hours a day, I was playing the fool. I
walked very slowly. I spoke slowly. I
four in the morning, we went to sleep
for another hour, and then the day be- was very slow in everything I did. Evegan. When we came outside, there was ry time they were a bit rough, I started
crying. I really pushed myself to the
a very old car, full of holes. It seems
limit, but after a month they decided
that this car with a single person in it
just broke in front of one of the walls of I had to go to the army hospital, two
or three times a week, to make tests.
the army quarters. And at that point,
We had to put on civilian clothing and
everyone was so crazy that everybody
form a walking line. We had one army
just started shooting. They killed the
man. But it was just a detail of the kind officer in the back, in civilian clothing,
of ugly things that happened at the
Continued, page 4, column 1
like me, they gave you very very large
clothing. If your feet were big, you
had small shoes – you know – every
possible way to make you feel bad was
good for them. And in the middle of
the night, we hear some shooting. And
then the officers came into the room.
We were about three hundred some
young soldiers, our very first night.
They came into our room, shouting,
screaming, hitting the metal bars of
the bed frames with their sticks. We
had to jump out of our beds in our underwear. Some of the kids were crying,
shouting, pissing in their pants. It was
complete madness. Meanwhile, the
shooting kept on outside. Meanwhile
23 ‫אויגוסט‬
‫קלעזנײַעס‬
Page 2, August 23
KlezKanada en español
by Sergio Smilovich
primer reporte,
Estoy sentado enfrente de Ari
davidov,
Me invita a escribir sobre klezkanada en castellano
sentado estoy en klezkabaret, lugar
donde se improvisa especialmente
durante la noche,
sirve de lugar de conferencias, teatro lugar de reunion, y es la noche, la
noche cuando los sonidos klezmaticos
salen a la luz de la luna,
la luz del tiempo
y de un Nuevo amanecer , siempre,
ayer empezo la celebracion de los 10
anios de klezkanada.
Tengo la suerte de participar por
segunda vez en el este maravilloso, especial festival de musica klezmer donde
musicos de todas parte de los continents
vienen por una semana a dar, brindar,
llenar, escuchar, investigar, crear , desde
el domingo 21 de agosto hasta el proximo 28 de agosto.
Enfrente de este klezkabaret, esta el
lago, la montania, el silencio, la luna, y el
cielo, los cielos , las agues y
las agues arribas de los cielos,
La calma de este lugar
que queda a 100 kilometros
norte de montreal, en el
bnei brith camp , es unica.
Es un lugar propicio para
la creacion, la interpretacion, escuchar los sonidos,
los nuevos sonidos, los
silencios, los nuevos silencios, la musica klezmer de
todos los tiempos, y de una
nueva luz, Nuevo
Se ven todos los instrumentos, tubas, guitarras,
fiddlers, microfonos, trombones,
Antes una banda klezmer, percussion, trompeta,
clarinete, violin, trombon,
bajo, juegan una musica
para que la gente pueda
bailar, expresar, sentir,
Ahora la distorsion de un microfono
asusta, como siempre,
Pero todo vuelve a la calma otra vez,
Las luces se apagan,
Y el show esta por comenzar,la
gente me pregunta: que haces?
Y les digo: estoy escribiendo un informe en espaniol para klezkanada, ca
va? Se acerca la gente a nuestra mesa,
en la esquina de la esquina,
Esperamos la conexion magica a internet para chatear con mi hijito tomy,
los extranio, claro! Y zoe, !
Klezkabaret se prepara para sonar,
Dejar la historia escrita es una manera de grabar las palabras , imagenes
que continuan en el tiempo,
Primero la palabra, luego la imagen,
despues grabar los sonidos de la palabra, y luego
Ahora el bullicio que pinta todas las
historias que se encuentran
…. Y se largo. Presentan en ingles
al festival de improvisacion, todas las
noches a partir de las 10 y media
son las casi once de la noche, se
anuncian 11 grados para la noche,
casi me olvide de los +40 y de los
-40 que van a venir,
piano solo, asi comienza esta noche,
como se llama el pianista? le pregunto a ari davidov,:
pitch sokolow, me dice
le traduzco al ingles lo ultimo que
escribi y sonrie al entender la historia
que escribo en primera persona,
… y la noche sigue,
…. Y la luna la espero,
---- y los aplausos comienzan,
---- y a mi amor la imagino,
siempre
...‫וַיִּצ ֶר יהוה ֱאלׂהִים מִן–הָאֲדָמָה כּ ָל– ַחיַת ַהשָּד ֶה וְאֵת כּ ָל–עו ׂף ַהשָּ ַמיִם‬
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every foul
of the air.
Evelyn Maizels: Papercut inspired by Genesis 1:19.
23 ‫אויגוסט‬
‫קלעזנײַעס‬
Page 3, August 23
Nisenson, continued from page 2
and they said, “If I see any of you looking at someone, talking to someone in
the street, I will kill you all.”
That was our every day’s bread. For
one month we had that. After a month I
had a speech by an army colonel saying,
“You sure you’re sick? Because if you’re
not sick, the shame of not having done
your part for the country will follow
you all your life.” Of course at that moment I started to feel that things were
really right, that I was about to get out
of there. He gave me a letter. When I
went back to army quarters that day
I couldn’t see what was in the letter,
because it was closed, but that very
same evening. An officer came to me
and said, “Oh, shame on you. You can’t
go tonight because we can’t let you go in
the night, but tomorrow morning you
are out of here. You piece of garbage.”
He insulted me in many ways. I couldn’t
really laugh at that moment, but the
thing is that it worked.
Something I couldn’t know at that
time is that not only my fellow soldiers
had to kill people, they had to participate in all kinds of ugly things they
didn’t want to do. And there was no
way they could refuse without risking
their lives – is that a few months later
the Argentinean dictatorship started
fighting with the Chilean dictatorship
and they had a little war, for a few
months, on the southern border of
Patagonia. So many of my fellow soldiers found themselves in a real war.
Not only in a civil war, a hidden war
– but in also a real war against another
army, just because two crazy Generals
decided they wanted to fight for I don’t
know what piece of mountain.
But by that time, I was already in
Israel. That was the first thing I did
when I got out of the army.
‫א ַ ביסל ײדיש‬
Bonim, continued from page 1
seen much, except at bedtime. They are
constantly kept busy with the kids program and their friends. It’s a wondrous
thing to watch them spend time with
their camp friends. The friends come
by our cabin in the morning to walk to
breakfast; they swim, learn songs, take
lessons, and talk the night away.
Same with us parents. We spend a
lot of time together, play our music,
attend classes and activities, and share
the day’s events at mealtimes. The evenings are filled with music late into the
night as well as visiting and enjoying
the camp culture. We always make new
friends and spend a lot of time getting to know them. It seems we always
make new friends on the last day and
have to pick up again with them the
next year. We have certainly become
KlezKanadians!
a bisl yiddish for klezmorim
compiled by Kolya Borodulin for the absolute beginner’s “Yiddish 101” session
Er hot bay ir a vert vi a
poyker bay di klezmer.
He’s worth as much to her as
the drummer to the band
‫מע לױפֿט װי ַא מױז איבערן‬
.‫צימבל‬
Me loyft vi a moyz ibern
tsimbl.
To run like a mouse across
the tsimbl.
‫װאַס װילסטו איך זאַל‬
‫אַרײַנשטעלן ַא כּלי–זמר אין‬
?‫תחת ארײַן‬
Vos vilstu ikh zol
araynshteln a klezmer in
tukhes arayn?
What do you want? I should
stick a klezmer up my ass?
.‫מע צימבלט אױף די נערװן‬
Me tsimblt oyf di nervn.
It’s really getting on my
nerves.
‫ער האָט בײַ איר ַא װערט װי ַא‬
.‫פּױקער בײַ די כּלי–זמר‬
23 ‫אויגוסט‬
‫קלעזנײַעס‬
Page 4, August 23